Promoting Traditional Values

This is my idea of "Traditional Values"

--ryan

Spirit of Crazy Horse Provides a Lesson in Traditional Values

Sun, Oct. 31, 2004
By Robert Folsom
Knight Ridder Newspapers

"The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History" by Joseph M. Marshall III; Viking ($24.95)

Much has been written about Crazy Horse, and many accounts agree. Yet Joseph M. Marshall III adds a dimension with his new telling, "The Journey of Crazy Horse."

And "telling" is the correct word. Marshall was raised on the Rosebud, S.D., Sioux Reservation, and his first language is Lakota. His perspective is informed by the American Indian oral tradition.

Marshall was born in 1945. When he was 6 years old, he heard his grandfather Albert and a man he knew as Grandpa Isaac relate the tale of a battle they had heard from a generation that had been alive in 1876, the year of the Greasy Grass Fight, also known as the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

One name that kept coming up was Tasunke Witko, or His Crazy Horse. Marshall resolved to learn more about the man.

Marshall informs us about the events that shaped Crazy Horse as a youth, when he went by the name Light Hair. That his hair and skin were lighter in color than other Lakota boys' made him an easy target for taunting. His quieter disposition didn't help.

Yet this quiet youth went off by himself and received a vision. He quickly learned that unless he unerringly followed his vision, there could be foolhardy consequences.

After Light Hair showed bravery in battle, his father, whose name was Crazy Horse, gave Light Hair his name. His father then took the humble name of Worm and proclaimed pride in his son. Even so, the light-skinned Crazy Horse did not like to talk of his courageous acts.

Marshall sets this example: The spirit of Crazy Horse is alive, and as long as American Indians foster traditional values, their spirit is alive, also.
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